While many children attended on opening night, I hardly heard a peep from them during the show – it was the over-25 crowd who were clapping and screaming upon each first entrance of these beloved characters from the underwater city of Bikini Bottom.

Nostalgia has a funny way of raising the stakes. A mediocre presentation wouldn’t just be disappointing; it would feel like someone had replaced my ruby slippers with muddy boots and then trounced all over my childhood memories. Thankfully, director Tony Parise’s production bursts to life with color, imagination, and obvious affection for the material.

Seussical, now playing at Omar – I mean, the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre – features an exuberant mash-up of plots from about a third of Theodor Seuss Geisel’s lifetime output of 60-plus children’s books. (And yeah, there were more Dr. Seuss books after he died. Peculiar thing, that.)

Genesius Guild’s current production of Antigone, directed by Michael Callahan, is the Guild’s annual high school show and features a cast of almost all teenagers – appropriate, considering that so many of the key characters, including the titular Antigone, are teenagers themselves.